Week 11

We looked at a lot of Dada and Surrealist art this week and one of the artists that I found most interesting was Loretta Lux. She takes photographs of children but they are so creepy looking. The children all seem to have a dazed and disconnected expression on their faces, almost like they aren't really human. The backgrounds in all of her photographs are photoshopped so they add to the unreal nature of the photographs. What really interests me about her work is the that she uses photoshop and that makes me wonder how much of the photographs have been altered. In some of them it looks like the color of the kids' skin has been changed and their features have been exagerated. I think this raises the question, what is a photograph? I wonder if we'll come up with a term for photographs that have been altered to serve other purposes that just documenting a moment. I also wonder where Lux finds all these creepy kids I certainly don't see these kinds of kids walking down the street everyday. If I had a kid I'm not so sure I'd let an artist photograph them knowing how the pictures would look. Actually, I probably would because she is such a well respected artist and I'm sure parents probably get frees pics of their kids.

Week Nine

This week we looked at documentary photography by photographers such as, Jacob Riis and Walker Evans. I find Jacob Riis's work very interesting because it is so raw. I was shocked to see how casual and comfortable the people in his photographs appeared to be despite the fact that they were living in such horrible conditions and being photographed. I'm actually surprised at how natural many of the people are in the photographs we see. This is seen in Evans's work as well. As soon as someone with a camera gets near me I always feel a little awkward. I couldn't imagine how weird I would feel if there was someone I didn't know taking pictures of me in my home, a place of privacy. In Migrant Mother, even the children look like they're at ease and their mother isn't even paying attention to the camera. I wonder if any of these photographers ever get turned down when they ask to take someones picture. I would probably turn them down unless I had heard of them. I guess today you never know if you're going to end up on the Internet. That was just one aspect of documentary photography that I found to be really interesting.

Week Eight

Something that we discussed in class this week that I found very interesting is environmental portraiture. It refers to when a photographer photographs his subject in their natural environment or a place where they feel comfortable. It's amazing how easy it is to tell when someone is being photographed in their home versus when they've been photographed in a studio. People look so much less posed when they've been shot at home. I think in most cases photographers try to make their subjects as comfortable as possible when they are being shot. The whole profession of modeling is about one's ability to look at ease in front of the camera. On America's Next Top model the contestants are constantly be scolded for not looking comfortable enough. The models will often times be told that their arm looks awkward or that they have a strained look on their face. I wonder we are so concerned with looking happy and comfortable? I can understand that when someone has their portrait taken or has a family portrait taken they want to be remember as they really were which is generally not posed. My favorite pictures of myself were caught in the moment when I was in the middle of laughing or talking. I think they look more like me and capture more of my personality. Last year, my mom made my sister and I get our pictures taken at a studio for Christmas cards and we looked so stiff in them. My boyfriend made the comment that we didn't look like ourselves.